The two lawyers subjected to the attack, Mohamed Fadel and Anas Sayed, are members of the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights and the Hesham Mubarak Law Centre respectively.

Police conscripts assaulted the lawyers for objecting to the abuse their defendants were receiving, a joint statement by the two human rights groups said.

“After objecting to the beating of the detained protesters, the lawyers walked out of the prosecution office to find themselves ambushed and assaulted by CSF conscripts in front of the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor witnessed the event,” the statement said.

Both centres filed complaints against the conscripts with the Qasr El-Nile prosecution which immediately opened a case, ordered the arrest of the conscripts, and referred the lawyers to a hospital for a medical report by the forensics authority.

“The centres take this incident as evidence that violence is part of the police’s creed and that such events are not isolated one-off incidents. The police use violence as the only way to respond to any given situation,” the statement said.

The NGOs called for a restructuring of the Ministry of Interior and police as well as the punishment of all officers and personnel involved in such incidents.